Palm

Medieval EnglishHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

3 inches (7.62 cm), about the breadth of a hand without the thumb. One of the oldest body-based units, used in many cultures with values of roughly 7 to 9 cm.

1 palm = 0.0762 meters (exactly).

About the palm

Open a hand flat and the part below the fingers gives the palm its name, which came through Old French from Latin palma, a word tied to a root meaning flat. As a measure it was the width of four fingers. Egyptian cubit-rods mark palms of about 7.5 cm from the reign of Djer in the First Dynasty, and Greek, Roman and Israelite palms fell between about 6.7 and 8.8 cm. In those systems three palms made a span and six a cubit.

In England the palm is given as 3 inches, or 7.62 cm, the figure used here, but the evidence is tangled, since the four-inch hand was sometimes confused with it and Wiktionary even glosses the English palm as four inches. Medieval Italy, France and Iberia used a much longer palm descended from the Roman greater palm, around 24.6 to 24.8 cm, while Morocco's was about 18.2 cm. The palm was left out of Britain's Weights and Measures Act of 1824 and is not a US customary unit.

Sources: Wikipedia: Palm (unit); Wikipedia: Hand (unit); Wiktionary: palm

Palm conversion chart

1 palm expressed in every other length unit:

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